a manifestation of feeling.  Hedwig had hitherto liked the baroness, finding in her a woman of a certain artistic sense, combined with a certain originality.  The girl was an absolute contrast to the woman, and admired in her the qualities she thought lacking in herself, though she possessed too much self-respect to attempt to acquire them by imitation.  Hedwig sat like a Scandinavian fairy princess on the summit of a glass hill; her friend roamed through life like a beautiful soft-footed wild animal, rejoicing in the sense of being, and sometimes indulging in a little playful destruction by the way.  The girl had heard a voice in the dark singing, and ever since then she had dreamed of the singer; but it never entered her mind to confide to the baroness her strange fancies.  An undisciplined imagination, securely shielded from all outward disturbing causes, will do much with a voice in the dark,—­a great deal more than such a woman as the baroness might imagine.

I do not know enough about these blue-eyed German girls to say whether or not Hedwig had ever before thought of her unknown singer as an unknown lover.  But the emotions of the previous night had shaken her nerves a little, and had she been older than she was she would have known that she loved her singer, in a distant and maidenly fashion, as soon as she heard the baroness speak of him as having been her property.  And now she was angry with herself, and ashamed of feeling any interest in a man who was evidently tied to another woman by some intrigue she could not comprehend.  Her coming to visit the baroness had been as unpremeditated as it was unexpected that morning, and she bitterly repented it; but being of good blood and heart, she acted as boldly as she could, and showed no little tact in making Nino sing, and thus cutting short a painful conversation.  Only when the baroness tried to caress her and stroke her hand she shrank away, and the blood mantled up to her cheeks.  Add to all this the womanly indignation she felt at having been so long deceived by Nino, and you will see that she was in a very vacillating frame of mind.

The baroness was a subtle woman, reckless and diplomatic by turns, and she was not blind to the sudden repulse she met with from Hedwig, unspoken though it was.  But she merely withdrew her hand, and sat thinking over the situation.  What she thought, no one knows; or at least, we can only guess it from what she did afterwards.  As for me, I have never blamed her at all, for she is the kind of woman I should have loved.  In the meantime Nino carolled out one love song after another.  He saw, however, that the situation was untenable, and after a while he rose to go.  Strange to say, although the baroness had asked Nino to breakfast and the hour was now at hand, she made no effort to retain him.  But she gave him her hand, and said many flattering and pleasing things, which, however, neither flattered nor pleased him.  As for Hedwig, she bent her head a little, but said nothing, as he bowed before her.  Nino therefore went home with a heavy heart, longing to explain to Hedwig why he had been tied to the baroness,—­that it was the price of her silence and of the privilege he had enjoyed of giving lessons to the contessina; but knowing also that all explanation was out of the question for the present.  When he was gone Hedwig and the baroness were left together.